Finn Brunton's 'Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet' Explores Digital Nuisance Origins
Finn Brunton's book 'Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet' delves into the unwanted digital messages that persist even beyond death, as noted by screenwriter Ian Martin on his sixtieth birthday. The term 'spam' originated from early web pioneers quoting Monty Python's 1970 'Spam' sketch in university network messages. Pitcairn Island leads per capita in global spam production, while São Tomé and Príncipe funded telecommunications upgrades by routing American phone sex lines. Sanford Wallace, a self-proclaimed 'spam king', faced multimillion-dollar lawsuits from MySpace and Facebook. The Enron scandal provided antispam researchers with a public email cache for filter analysis. Brunton frames spam as a blend of techno-economics and ancient human vices like greed and lust, based on a dissertation. The article first appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of ArtReview.
Key facts
- Finn Brunton authored 'Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet'
- The term 'spam' stems from Monty Python's 1970 sketch quoted by early web users
- Pitcairn Island is the top per capita source of spam worldwide
- São Tomé and Príncipe financed telecom infrastructure via spam-routed phone sex lines
- Sanford Wallace faced lawsuits from MySpace and Facebook over spam activities
- Enron's publicly available emails aided antispam filter research
- The book originated as a dissertation, blending technical and human anecdotes
- The article was published in Summer 2013 by ArtReview
Entities
Artists
- Finn Brunton
- Ian Martin
Institutions
- ArtReview
- MySpace
- Monty Python
Locations
- Pitcairn Island
- São Tomé and Príncipe